Task

SoftArc Engineering, a local engineering company has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud computing in their daily operations. They have a series of staff that work on different projects in different parts of the country and are looking to provide them with office automation, such as email, word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files. What are the critical points, other than cost, that you need to consider in order to prepare your advice for this company? Your report to SoftArc should be about 2 pages.

SoftArc Engineering is considering using an IaaS provider to host some of its computing infrastructure. They have asked you to prepare a report for them that describes the difference between locally hosted computing infrastructure consisting of servers, storage and network the SoftArc data centre, and similar infrastructure provided using an IaaS provider. What are the critical points, other than cost, that an enterprise would need to consider in choosing to migrate services and storage from local hosted infrastructure to an IaaS service provider. Your report to SoftArc should be about 2 pages.

SoftArc engineering is also considering whether to use PaaS or SaaS to provide services to its employees. SoftArc has deployed Microsoft Exchange 2012 in its data centre to provide email services to all 250 employees. It has also deployed Microsoft SharePoint 2013 from its data centre as a collaboration and document management tool for its employees. The SharePoint 2013 instance has been extensively customised to suit SoftArc's needs and also Runs Project Central, their Project Management tool as a separate application from within SharePoint. All employees have the Microsoft Office 2013 suite of office automation products installed on their respective desktops or laptops. SoftArc want you to report on:

Should SoftArc move to a SaaS provider in order to provide email and office automation services for their employees? What are the advantages and disadvantages of moving to a SaaS provider for these services?
SoftArc would like to move its SharePoint 2013 instance to the cloud to make it more accessible, particularly to its users in remote locations. What is the best model (IaaS, PaaS or SaaS) for SoftArc to use for this service? Choose the model that you consider most appropriate for this service and discuss why the model you chose is the most appropriate for the SharePoint service.
Your report for this question should be no more than 3 pages.